


the words are all escaping

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Series: now you're the future [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Dorks in Love, Emotional Baggage, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Lack of Communication, Language, Nonverbal Communication, Separation Anxiety, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 21:38:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12897378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: Months after the destruction of the Death Star, Jyn and Cassian remain inseparable, bound into a relationship they can’t quite define, and a rebellion that’s hiding out on an ice planet. Naturally, they’re models of self-awareness, maturity, and open dialogue.





	the words are all escaping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skitzofreak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/gifts).



> I've been holding off on the last chapter of _waking up in a minefield_ for reasons (ad astra reasons), but wrote a sequel, anyway.

If she thought about it, Jyn would have guessed that Cassian grasped about half of what she didn’t say.  ****For one, they rarely needed more than a few words to understand each other; some things she could communicate without even that much. Others he picked up on, whether she meant him to or not, because—well, spy.

It all started, though, with one of the few issues that Jyn and Cassian did openly discuss. At length. They didn’t want to, of course. It was just that, with them,  _you need to go to the med-bay_  couldn’t really be negotiated in glances and a few muttered (Jyn) or pithy (Cassian) words.

On Cassian’s side, he hounded her to see a medic for every trifling cold or fever.  _Sometimes_  they turned out to be more than trifling, fine. But not most of the time. 

Jyn would have shrugged off his fussing, but she wasn’t that much of a hypocrite. Even months after their escape from Scarif, she had yet to release her iron grip on Cassian’s medical care, particularly when it came to the spine he’d smashed defending her. If that made her overprotective, well—for one, he had all the self-preservation of a TIE pilot, and for another, he didn’t seem to mind. Cassian wasn’t a hypocrite, either.

Usually.

“You’re going to get your implants evaluated,” she informed him, six months after the Death Star exploded over Yavin 4.

Cassian had just collapsed onto their bunk with a relieved sigh. Now, he turned his head just enough to peer in her direction. “Since when?”

“They recommend biannual check-ups.” Jyn still loathed the doctor, whose name she had long since forgotten, but she thought she could trust him that far. Mostly because she’d seen Cassian starting to hide a slight limp. And he tensed whenever he changed position—not noticeably, to others, but very little about him ever escaped her notice. Amazingly, losing everyone else she ever loved made her a bit watchful of the one person she had left.

“They recommend, not require,” he said, disappearing into their four blankets. “It’s not safe.”

(Jyn had stolen three of the blankets on recruitments. The first time, she shrugged smugly when Cassian stared and asked how she’d managed to steal a blanket larger than she was. The third time, she agreed that yes, they should probably give the extras to other people, and no, she wasn’t going to. He didn’t ask again.)

“Not safe?” Jyn asked, more puzzled than irritated. She tossed her datapad on the desk and slouched in their one, very uncomfortable, chair. “You think they’ll try anything with me there?”

A muffled snort was just audible. “No.”

Jyn waited. She was very good at it, when she bothered to be.

At last, Cassian said, “It’s the anaesthesia. I don’t know what I’m saying until it wears off.”

Half a dozen snide responses sprang to mind. Regretfully, she suppressed all of them.

“I know that,” said Jyn. “Last time, you said that I was poetic.”

“Did I?” She thought his voice actually trembled. “I wasn’t thinking of, ah, that.”

“You also asked me if you were a cyborg,” she said, giving up on the chair and the chilly temperature of their quarters at night.  _Worse_  than chilly. Even Jyn got cold on Hoth.

After the galaxy’s quickest change of clothes, she grabbed the datapad and one of the blasters she’d discarded with her holster, and climbed into bed. Shivering, Jyn tried to find some opening in the tangled mass of blankets, with no effect until they gave a dramatic twitch and lifted.

She crawled under, stowing the blaster under her pillow. Cassian didn’t do that, but he was painfully careless—except about organization—when he felt safe. Jyn never felt safe. Not completely, and certainly not with the Empire combing the galaxy for them. Fine, it didn’t seem like Imperial spies ever managed … anything, given their total failure to find Alliance bases over twenty years, but you could never be sure. And Jyn had good reason to know that Rebels sometimes defected, if very rarely; they just didn’t tend to live long afterwards.

(Cassian tried to keep her from those missions, at first. Jyn, whose qualms about murder did not extend to traitors, simply packed as usual and slipped into the ship before he arrived. When he found her in the co-pilot’s chair, he opened his mouth to say something stupid and unnecessary, so Jyn just propped her boots up on the panel—which he hated—and stared at him. They never exchanged a word about it, but after the fourth time, he gave up altogether and Jyn kept her feet on the floor.)

Jyn gave an exasperated sigh when she saw Cassian under the blankets, sprawled lengthwise on his stomach. He often slept that way, and the thin bed had to be hell on his spine, but she wished he wouldn’t leave his back unprotected. Jyn scooted closer, keeping her back firmly on the mattress, the door in sight, and her blaster in reach. Then she pulled one of her legs back and took out her datapad, resting it against her thigh.

Cassian turned his head to peer at her. “What are you doing?”

“Making the appointment,” she said.

Startled, he propped himself up on an elbow. “You can’t—”

_Watch me_ , she thought, and brought up the medical logs. She wasn’t lying; without a pause, she clicked on the appointment panel and started tapping.  _A, N, D, O—_

“Jyn, no.” Cassian tried to grab the datapad, but she was faster. Jyn pinned down his free arm and held the pad away.

After a moment’s consideration, she narrowed in on his weakest side. “You won’t be any good at field work if you fuck up your back. Are you seriously going to risk that because you say stupid things when you’re high?”

He winced. “It’s not that. Let go of me.”

She did, keeping a suspicious eye on him.

“It’s too dangerous,” he told her, in a patient tone that she always found exceptionally grating.

Not for the first time, Jyn wished that Kaytoo had survived. They hadn’t been close, as such. He was Cassian’s. Not his property, but a companion, a friend. Jyn wouldn’t have called him  _her_  friend. But she’d been willing to guard him with her life after two weeks of bickering. She’d gotten a kick out of the bickering, honestly. She suspected she’d get even more of a kick out of Kay’s response to the fact that  _Cassian won’t get his cybernetics upgraded_  was an actual sentence that existed in the galaxy. A true sentence, even. In his memory, she concluded that the odds he’d have taken her side were probably about … eighty-six percent.

Cassian closed his eyes. “Jyn. What are you thinking?”

She wasn’t one to turn away an opening, least of all when it required only the truth. “That Kaytoo would have already dragged you to the med-bay.”

He flinched.

“You think he wouldn’t have insisted on upgrades?” she said ruthlessly.

After a thin, sharp breath, Cassian said, “Kay didn’t have much of a grasp on secrecy.”

She nearly rolled her eyes. Anaesthesia left him outspoken and distracted, but inane chatter hardly counted as dangerous revelations. Only Cassian would consider his passing thoughts secrets. But it seemed strange that he’d consider that worth risking his fitness for fighting the Empire. Unless … wait. He thought it  _unsafe_ , not merely undesirable. Danger, secrecy, loss of control—

“You’re talking about giving up intelligence?” asked Jyn, moderately annoyed with herself.

“What else would I be talking about?”

“You?” She shook her head. “Oh, nothing.”

Cassian heaved a sigh and gave up. Pushing the blankets away—Jyn grumbled in protest—he dragged himself upright. Fine. Jyn sat up, too, much more smoothly, and stuck the datapad under her blaster.

“Do you really think I’d let you betray the Rebellion?” she said. “To those people?”

He smiled faintly. “I forgot that you disliked the medics so much.”

Undeterred, she pressed on, “You do really think so.”

“No!” Alarm flashed into his blank expression, and his hand twitched on the blankets. “I told you, not if you’re there. It’s just … not certain you will be, and I could say anything.”

“Not certain?” she repeated. “What are you talking about?”

They’d both spent enough of their lives identifying shapes in the night to make each other out. Jyn, aware that he would see past the slanting dimness, scowled. Hopefully, it would look more menacing than usual in the shadows.

He dropped his gaze to his hands, splayed out just in front of him. “You might not be there. That’s fine, but …”

“I wouldn’t leave my cat alone with people who have to be terrorized into basic ethics. Much less my—” Her frown deepened, and she made a vague gesture in Cassian’s direction. “Whatever you are.”

“You don’t have a cat,” he said, thankfully ignoring the last bit.

“I might if you didn’t keep saying it’d freeze to death or get eaten by taun-tauns.”

“Well, it would,” said Cassian.

“Not if—” About to expand on her cat-related grudges, she snapped her mouth shut. He’d almost won, there. “This isn’t about the cat  _I will one day acquire._  It’s about you going to the med-bay.”

With a cautious look, and the slower speech he used when picking his words, he said, “It’s not that I distrust you.”

“Do you know something I don’t? Is there a solo operation coming up?” She’d never had one, not without Cassian lurking around or at least back in the ship, but Jyn wouldn’t put it past Draven. Even with open antagonism gone, he was harsh, demanding, and near as paranoid as Saw. Not vindictive, usually, but he might have some warped Draven logic for separating them. Or maybe—

Horror crept up her spine. Jyn felt her eyes widen.

“Wait, are they reassigning us?”

“No, no.” Cassian looked appalled. He grasped at her hand, his voice falling into its most soothing tones. “Nothing like that. It’s only that I can’t … I don’t assume—”

“That I’ll stick around when things go bad?” she said coldly.

Cassian sighed and started to unclasp her fingers. With a glare, Jyn seized his wrist, making no attempt to gentle her grip.

“It’s not bad, Jyn. Just a little uncomfortable.”

“It will be if you don’t get those implants repaired,” she retorted. “But you’re right.”

Cassian eyed her with very reasonable skepticism. “Oh?”

“Yes,” said Jyn. “It’s probably a minor adjustment that won’t even take much time. Choices are so difficult, though. Missing a couple hours of paperwork or leaving you to betray Rebellion secrets? I just don’t know.”

He fell quiet, responding to neither the sarcasm or the argument for a good minute. Even then, he didn’t speak, just frowned and dropped his gaze to their linked fingers. Jyn thought she’d been quite clear, really, but Cassian studied her palm as if he might find some revelation in the callouses and lines.

Not a performance, Jyn realized. He knew she cared, but he didn’t understand. For all the furious protectiveness that lived in her skin, her blood, he didn’t see it. Cassian, who saw so much. He didn’t  _know_.

Jyn had no idea what to say. Strung between residual annoyance and shock, Jyn felt a rare urgency to find some words, however inadequate, but they all blanked out of her thoughts.

For no particular reason, her mind instead jolted back to the hangar on Massassi. Not the electrified gravity that sprang into being as Cassian approached, the thrill of trust and more, but Kaytoo slouching over to her. His voice had fallen into a Kaytoo approximation of friendliness.

_I’ll be there for you. Cassian said I had to._

“Jyn?” As usual, Cassian looked concerned—the sort of concern that moved rapidly towards fear. That was pretty usual, too.

“You’re pinching my fingers,” replied Jyn, which was about the last thing she would have chosen to say.

Cassian relaxed his grip, thankfully without trying to withdraw again. “What is it?”

“Listen,” she told him, fumbling but determined to barrel through. “You’re going to get your spine checked, and I’m going to be there. I won’t let anything dangerous happen. Is that good enough?”

The shadows obscured him, but Jyn saw Cassian wet his lip, the way he always did—except undercover—when he felt unsure or tense.

Evenly, he said, “You swear that you’ll stay?”

It was one of the only things he’d ever asked of her. A staggering amount of trust, too, when she thought of Cassian, and the Rebellion, and—

She knew he trusted her. She did. She couldn’t possibly have doubted it after Rogue One, had no reason to doubt it over the months since, would be outraged at anything else. Still, something in her flared bright. Outside of their team, burned away on Scarif, nobody else had trusted her in a very long time. Rightly so, except her mother and Saw, but she … it was … she didn’t know. If she couldn’t describe the nameless thing between them, she could think:  _there’s nothing like this._

Jyn rolled her eyes and lifted her free hand. “May the Force strike me down if I lie.”

“And you’ll see a medic, too?”

Her throat itched, with more than emotion. As she’d done for the last three days, Jyn swallowed down on it.

“What for?” she demanded.

The tickle got worse. Cassian, who’d been ignoring his  _crunched spine_ , fixed a steady gaze on her.

Jyn scowled. “Are you planning on using words sometime soon?”

“You coughed all night.” Somehow, he managed to make his voice and expression even more neutral than before.

“Not all night,” she insisted, though she honestly didn’t remember. “Anyway, the only problem is the air. It’s too dry. And cold, obviously. There’s nothing—”

She was babbling. From Jyn, that could only make her ten times more suspicious than she seemed already. Sure enough, Cassian’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s not any drier than usual.”

Jyn opened her mouth to say something dismissive and crushing. She would have, too, but instead she caught her breath and snatched her hand away, just in time.

_Damn it_ , she thought, and sneezed.

In the few seconds it took to Jyn to open her eyes, Cassian had already filched the datapad and started typing.

“That better be for you,” she told him.

“Mmhm,” said Cassian, not even trying to sound convincing.

She wiped off her hand on her sleepshirt. “Cassian. It’s a cough.”

“You’re too careless,” he said.

“You’re a cyborg!”

They glared at each other, more obstinate than angry. Jyn tried grabbing at the datapad, but Cassian kept it from her by the simple expedient of holding it above his head.

“I could take you,” she threatened.

He lifted his brows. “But my spine, Jyn.”

That was  _cheating_. But Cassian had no compunctions whatsoever about cheating, except when it didn’t matter. Not that a few sniffles really mattered. Just to him.

Annoyance and cough notwithstanding, she felt a quiet pleasure at that. Memories of those years when nobody cared whether she lived or died always remained with her, icy undercurrents to every thought or feeling. Against those, Cassian’s incessant worry shone, set her alight even at its most irritating.

Like now.

“I’ll go if you go,” he said.

Jyn folded her arms, trying to think of some alternative. Nothing sprang to mind. “Fine.”

“Fine,” Cassian retorted, and pulled out of arm’s reach to finish her appointment. She could have wrestled him for it, but he was right, damn him; she wouldn’t risk hurting his back. Instead, she waited until he finished and relaxed his guard, then lunged for it, checking the last message. Sure enough:  _ERSO, JYN_  and a line of symptoms more detailed than she herself had noticed.

Vindictively, she typed  _ANDOR, CASSIAN_  and started listing everything from her real concerns to the most trivial observations she could think of.

“Headaches and chills?” he said when she finished. “On Hoth?”

“Don’t want to be careless,” replied Jyn.

They both mumbled under their breaths as they retreated back beneath the blankets, though Jyn felt more grumpy affection than anything else, and no doubt Cassian did, too. When he twisted around to lie on his stomach again, she made her sigh as long-suffering as possible, but set a steadying hand against his back.

After a long moment, Cassian said into his pillow, “Want me to go with you?”

Startled, Jyn blinked. She hadn’t thought about it.

“I know you don’t trust them,” he added.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “It’s not a big deal, but you can. If you—”

“Okay,” said Cassian, and that was that.

* * *

When he woke after his repairs, Cassian didn’t say anything about the Rebellion, though he did prattle on about her eyes for a good three minutes. Jyn thought about disrupting that, too, but decided against it. She didn’t … mind, and he wouldn’t remember anyway. But she added her enjoyment of Cassian on anaesthetics to her collection of  _things I will never tell him, ever._ He always turned unfocused and clingy and peculiarly sweet, at least with her, and—she preferred his real self, but it was nice in its own way.

The first time, she also turned out to have bronchitis, which Cassian was insufferably smug about. But he acceded to the one-year appointment without any infection to bargain over, and Jyn sat nearby and distracted him with inane questions when he so much as hinted about past or present work. It wasn’t difficult; even the simplest questions could kick him into incoherent tangents—she still wasn’t sure how  _have you tried the eggs? they’re terrible_ turned into a grisly description of his sisters’ deaths, and that into liking flowers.

The third time, a year and a half after the Battle of Yavin, Cassian made the appointment himself. He didn’t even ask Jyn if she would accompany him, just assumed she would and gave her the day and time (two months beforehand, of course). But things were a bit different by then.

Most significantly, the Rebellion no longer regarded Jyn as an unreliable accessory of Cassian’s, useful as a symbol and muscle and little else. Even Draven had come to treat them as a unit, Andor-and-Erso, rarely in need of differentiation. They treated  _themselves_  as a unit, staying within arm’s reach whenever possible, more soothed than electrified by casual touch.

Even in bed, they slept tangled up instead of sticking to the careful distance they once maintained. They’d been too starved and nervous to dare more, at first. But when they had nightmares, or worked themselves into dead exhaustion, or got sedated for some reason or another, Cassian would curl himself about her, and Jyn started to feel cold and uneasy when he didn’t. She didn’t say so;  _that_  stayed the same. Instead, she yanked him hard enough that he ended up sprawled over half her body, face against her shoulder and arm braced over her waist. They both laughed, but they did sleep that way more often than not, mostly because Jyn rested better with an arm over his unguarded head or back, and Cassian with her heart beating against him.

Also, they were warmer that way. 

That did matter, given that they both hated Echo Base as much as ever, and couldn’t escape on missions near as much as they would have liked. Hyperspace might be cold, but it was nothing like  _that_ , and they both felt more at home on their ship than anywhere else. There, they could complain, or adapt codes, or fuck, or go over mission plans in peace, or anything. They even shared the occasional memory as they flew—not mentioning why it mattered, or any significant detail, but they were children of the revolution and needed few explanations.

The thing was, whether they slept in their quarters or their ship or some miserable hide-out elsewhere, they trusted each other, if no one else. Jyn and Cassian did fight now and then—not frequently, but the doors just about iced over when they did—they’d seen and done too much together to doubt much of anything.

Yet for all that, the changes didn’t seem much more than  _a bit._  They’d felt themselves an inextricable pair from Scarif onwards. From almost the moment they set foot on Jedha, they’d hovered and grasped at each other. Jyn realized she’d trusted him when Cassian slipped away to kill her father, and she trusted him again when he went rogue for her. And they still spoke in silences, or in circles, or not at all. Hell, Jyn had yet to find a word for what they were to each other: too stable for lovers, too dependent for partners, too fierce for companions, too _much_ for friends. Maybe Cassian knew a word in his language, but that hardly helped.

In any case, their whatever-it-was had Jyn stubbornly parked beside Cassian’s cot for the third time. Since the medic turned out to be a mild-mannered doctor who immediately and persistently addressed Cassian in Alderaanian—something nobody else had ever done—Jyn had plenty of time to come up with potential tangents.

She didn’t use any of them. 

Cassian woke in a sleepy haze, smiling as soon as he saw her. “Estás aquí.”

Jyn knew exactly seven terms in Alderaanian:  _infanta, capitán, hola, bien, cómo está, qué,_ and _viva la rebelión._  She frowned, though she could guess at this one.

“Hey.”

He boosted himself by his palms, sitting up and glancing around. “Pensé que …”

_Qué_  was “what,” but add another word and she had no idea what he was talking about. Jyn took a stab anyway.

“I’m always here. How do you feel?”

To her increasing alarm, he didn’t respond in any way except to look dazedly at her. After a few minutes, he spoke again, still in Alderaanian. But it was too long and rapid for Jyn to even guess at. 

“Cassian, I can’t understand you,” she told him.

He unleashed a bright smile and said something else, just as incomprehensible. Nervous, Jyn switched on her datapad’s recorder.

By the time the doctor returned, he’d spent a good forty minutes earnestly talking to her, carrying on a one-sided conversation in total obliviousness to her confusion. Jyn had no idea what he said, no idea if he might be betraying some secret, no idea of how to uphold her promise. Cassian didn’t even seem to notice that she wasn’t responding.

Perhaps it would have seemed less bizarre if he ever used his language with her. Now and then, Jyn did hear people mixing scraps of Alderaanian in with their Basic—but not Cassian. As far as she could tell, he thought in Alderaanian when he spoke in Alderaanian, and in Basic when he spoke in Basic. Whether that was true or not, he certainly kept his languages as strictly regimented as he did everything else. On very rare occasions, he did forget random words or phrases in Basic, but he didn’t replace them with Alderaanian, just talked circles around the sudden blanks until she guessed what he meant, or he remembered them himself.

The exception to his rigid separation—the only exception, as far as Jyn could tell—was Leia Organa. He invariably addressed her as  _Infanta_  or  _Doña Leia_. Even so, he didn’t use those elsewhere, only with Leia herself.

Really, thinking back, the only time Jyn could remember hearing any significant amount of Alderaanian from him was in the first weeks after Scarif. They had fairly safe, low-classification missions while Cassian finished healing, but those missions often involved Alderaanian. They also involved bringing on a co-pilot while Jyn learned to fly, and they got Shara Bey. 

She was technically an X-wing pilot, but divisions in the Rebellion were more like guidelines, and she could fly anything. She also came from … Jyn didn’t remember, but another ex-colony. Anytime Bey didn’t expect Jyn to be present, she spoke to him in Alderaanian and he responded in it. That mostly meant that, as soon as she overheard them, Jyn halted where Bey wouldn’t notice her and Cassian could pretend not to. 

The two of them might be the most staggeringly attractive people Jyn had ever met, but it didn’t have anything to do with jealousy. She wouldn’t know that if it clubbed her with her own truncheons, except when it came to Cassian’s obnoxiously perfect aim (and she always crushed him at hand-to-hand,  _so_ ). But Jyn liked listening to them talk. Although she didn’t want to be weird about it, she found Alderaanian remarkably pleasant—and she felt an obscure satisfaction at hearing Cassian use his own language, the one he’d grown up with, and dreamed in, and carried on every syllable. Even if he couldn't use it with her.

At least usually. Right now, Jyn sat frozen in horror, recorder notwithstanding. She’d  _promised_  and she had no idea what he was saying and it could be anything—

She’d always sort of wished that he didn’t switch every single word to Basic with her, that she could understand what he murmured when they were safe and waking up together, what Antilles or the princess or Dameron called out in the halls. It could be useful, too. She just … she never said anything. It was his choice, and Jyn didn’t have the time, and none of that mattered.

Staring at him as he cheerfully chattered on, Jyn thought: yes, it did.

She would damn well  _make_  the time.

* * *

On consideration, Jyn didn’t ask Cassian to teach her Alderaanian. She didn’t even mention it to Cassian. If asked, she couldn’t have given any better reason than  _I don’t feel like it_ , and probably wouldn’t have bothered with that much. A shrug, maybe.

In fairness, the things Jyn didn’t mention to Cassian could have filled the Death Star—if it still existed, hah. They included, but were not restricted to:

  * For all her complaints about learning to fly, she’d actually enjoyed it. His irritation just amused her.


  * In retrospect, neither survival nor fighting the Empire were luxuries.


  * Back in the beginning, she’d been relieved that he was so skittish. Before him, Jyn rarely risked unnecessary touch, still more rarely liked it, and almost always had a secondary motive. She felt pretty sure it was the same for Cassian.


  * Jyn didn’t bother making friends because a) she didn’t much like people, b) Rebels tended to the loud and obnoxious, and c) Cassian was all she wanted. It wasn’t purposeful, and she’d never leave. (She felt  _definitely_  sure it was the same for him.)


  * Jyn knew that Cassian resented it when people assumed that he, or Bey, or whomever, felt any sort of personal grief over Alderaan. (Even though he had too much decency to say so, even in private, even to Jyn.)


  * She also knew that people joked she was his new droid. Jyn didn’t care. Anyone who thought Kay could be replaced wasn’t worth her time.


  * She enjoyed the brief period when they’d barely kissed, but let people believe they were a couple. They did it solely because intelligence preferred to bring in the spouses/partners of spies, and they were determined to work together or die together. But it was fun.


  * Although Jyn had certain issues with Cassian’s obedience (not as unthinking or as omnipresent as she’d once thought, but still more than she’d like), she did sometimes wonder what it would be like if—maybe—in other contexts— _anyway._


  * She rescued a tooka-cat when they stopped for fuel on the way to Jedha.


  * She had no idea what to call their relationship. They loved each other, certainly. But she couldn’t pinpoint any fundamental change since they left for Scarif, and didn’t really believe one existed. They were  _we_  and  _us_ and  _Jyn-and-Cassian_ ; she thought of nothing else, except  _home_.



In short, Jyn could keep her mouth shut and her feelings inconspicuous when she wanted to. It was what made her, against expectation, such a good intelligence agent. She certainly could keep her secrets, even (sometimes) from Cassian.

The only difficulty came when Bey turned out to be stationed halfway across the galaxy, and Jyn had to ask Princess Leia for a recommendation instead. She neither liked nor disliked Leia, who had the same unforgiving idealism and brisk competence as Cassian, without any of his restraint or caution. She respected her well enough, however, and Skywalker, too. That formed part of the reason Jyn didn’t wait for the latter to leave, though a smaller part than her suspicion that Leia already told him everything.

Regardless, Jyn was quite genuinely taken aback when, instead of offering a recommendation, Skywalker and the princess invited her to study with them. It turned out that the two of them had already been trying to teach each other their ancestral tongues: Alderaanian for Leia, some obscure Tatooine language for Skywalker (Soliskan?).

“All right,” said Jyn. She had some reservations, mostly about keeping it from Cassian, but couldn’t think of any better alternative. Belatedly, she tacked on, “Thanks.”

* * *

It worked better than she expected, for a stupid reason. All sorts of people had been pulled from across the Alliance to support Echo Base, regardless of their actual specialties, stuck in work that required approximately zero brainpower. 

In fact, the main hangar appeared to be run by another intelligence officer, a Major Derlin. Jyn wouldn’t even have known he  _was_  intelligence if not for the fact that a) Cassian and Leia had mentioned his extremely striking moustache, and b) he’d been Cassian’s first commander, and earned his still-burning hatred by trying to “fix” Kay. Jyn thought about it and adopted his antipathy, but even so, sticking spies in base administration? Saw would have never wasted people like that.

Spending half her time doing mundane tasks on base didn’t improve her low opinion of Alliance Command. It did help her go over lessons in her head, though.

On the bright side, it turned out that Leia (unsurprisingly) and Skywalker (very surprisingly) could keep secrets, too. Cassian knew that she was up to something, of course, but not what, and the fearless duo never gave her away. For a good four months, Jyn ran through vocabulary and conjugations as she made rounds on taun-tauns.

She still couldn’t understand much of what she heard, and only bits and pieces of what she and Skywalker dug up to read. But she could say some things, and know what they meant, and why. Occasionally, she even had to guard herself against reacting to little bits she picked up. It’d be a long stretch she didn’t understand, then  _sangre_ , a shorter stretch,  _tiene que_ , and a few words later,  _volcán_ , and she’d have to tamp down the  _what the hell?_ that immediately sprang to mind. Jyn decided that counted as progress.

At the end of those four months, deliverance arrived. Not linguistic deliverance, but by that point, Jyn would have accepted the deaths of several languages to get off Hoth.

She arrived in their quarters to find Cassian packing … everything, as far as she could tell. Not that either of them had much, but—

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Good news,” said Cassian, nodding at the datapads on their bed.

Jyn left Cassian to organize their clothes—they were both happier that way—and went over to see. Her datapad was blinking yellow: not an emergency, but urgent. They hadn’t gotten that one since … she had to strain to remember.

_Since we get posted on Echo Base._

She was already smiling as she flicked the screen on.

_REASSIGNMENT: SUBTERRA BASE, CORONET CITY_

“Corellia?” Jyn burst out. Without even thinking about it, the smile broaded into a wide grin.  _“Thank the Force.”_

“It’s dangerous,” said Cassian in his most sententious tones, setting a second bag aside to turn to her. “A Core planet, lots of Imperials, lots of criminals …”

She beamed. “I  _am_  a criminal.”

“Well, we’re all—”

Jyn was scoffing even before he managed to finish. “Please. You’ve never met a decent rule you didn’t love.”

His sigh and shake of his head would have been more effective without the crooked smile that accompanied them.

“This isn’t temporary?” she asked. “Or wasting us on maintenance again? We’re going to be doing actual work out of Subterra?”

“Looks like it,” said Cassian. He bit down on his lip, halfheartedly restraining himself.

She read over the few details on her datapad. “I’ll take a wild guess that the base is below the city. There are a ton of enclaves down there, if I remember right.”

Nodding, he said, “Yes. I’ve only got a few contacts, though. We haven’t really dealt with Corellia beyond ship components and such, and I’ve never done much with acquisition.”

“Opportunity calls,” said Jyn lightly. “I’ll take an underground base over an ice one any day. And I know some people.”

Cassian slanted a glance her way. “I’m sure you do.”

“Coronet is amazing, too,” she said, and started stripping the bunk with infinitely more enthusiasm than usual. “If we don’t get ourselves killed. They’ve got all sorts of people, and they sell everything imaginable. You won’t believe the coats.”

“You got into the Corellian black market for coats, hm?” He looked very solemn. “And here I didn’t even know you liked them.”

_Just yours_ , she very definitely did not say.

“Oh, yeah,” said Jyn. “You know me, blowing my credits on nice clothes in a place with thousands of illegal weapons.”

He gave up, eyes crinkling and creases denting his cheeks. “Sounds like you.”

They finished their packing in cheerful silence, aided only by the occasional smile. At the end—after resisting the impulse for a good twenty minutes—Jyn moved towards Cassian as casually as she could. He’d notice, but come up with his own explanation.

Neither said anything, not needing it, and she waited a few seconds for them to settle back into stillness. Then she grasped his shirt and pressed their mouths together, enjoying his muffled sound of surprise near as much as their lips and mingled breaths, his hands sliding up her back and her fingers in his hair. For one oxygen-deprived moment, she thought of licking into his mouth, pushing him into the bed—

No, she told herself firmly. They’d packed and the ship would be warmer.

When Cassian pulled away, a little breathless, he said, “I didn’t make the decision.”

“I know,” Jyn replied, and kissed him again.

Just a little, though. They had places to go and data to steal. Within the minute, Jyn and Cassian slung their bags over their shoulders and headed out.

Graciously, she left one of her blankets behind.

* * *

There were no tearful goodbyes. They didn’t have the networks of affection that people like Skywalker and the princess built up. Jyn did send a brief message to those two, thanking them for their help and wishing them well, but that was about the extent of her on-base relationships. By the time she and Cassian reached the hangar bay, Jyn itched to be gone, enduring a not-brief-enough discussion of their objectives with Draven before climbing into the ship.

“I’m not sure you ran away fast enough,” Cassian called out after her, once the doors slammed shut behind him. “He might have missed the point.”

“Worrying about Draven’s feelings definitely keeps me up at night.”

He actually laughed as he made his way to his seat, flicking on switches and controls. Changes came in flickers and waves: the building roar of engines, the cockpit lighting up, the control panel humming to life. She always felt that there was nothing quite like that very specific moment—those few suspended seconds when stagnation transformed into action.

For all her impulsivity and his caution, they were the same in this. They needed to be  _doing_ , not just thinking about it.

“Back to the real fight,” he said, with the exact note of satisfaction that she felt.

Jyn had waited months for the right moment. This, she thought, was it. But it had to be  _just_  right. She took a deep breath and counted to four.

Carefully, she said, “Que la Fuerza nos acompañe.”

Cassian started so violently that he dropped his headset. Turning to her, he stared without a word, lips parted in utter surprise. Then he smiled brilliantly—still incredulous, but smiling.

“When did you learn Alderaanian?”

“I didn’t,” said Jyn, “not really,” but words kept tumbling out of her mouth. “I mean, I’ve learned some things, not many, it was the princess and … I thought I should know. Or that I … it’s useful, right?”

Cassian’s smile faded, but only to a softer one. “It is.”

To her intense relief, he left it at that. She had no idea of what else to say. But in this moment, Jyn was happy, and Cassian was happy, and that seemed like enough.

“Okay.” Jyn picked up the headset, listening carefully while Cassian recovered his seatbelt and adjusted the controls. After a few minutes, she exhaled. “We’re cleared for take-off.”

They looked at each other.

“Que la Fuerza nos acompañe,” said Cassian, and they escaped into the sky.


End file.
